“As all 7 billion people on earth know, Apple (AAPL) dropped about 10% yesterday after the company’s holiday quarter and guidance fell short of expectations,” Jeff Macke reports for Yahoo Finance’s Breakout. “No need to rehash the misery. The only question now is whether Apple is just going through a short-term transition or is slowly becoming a modern day version of its long-time nemesis Microsoft (MSFT).”

“Count investor/ author/ entrepreneur Carol Roth as one of those in the camp that says Apple’s best days are behind it,” Macke reports. “‘There is a point in time when these companies become too big to succeed,’ Roth says. ‘Apple now is twice Microsoft’s size, approximately, and I think it’s running into the same issues; it’s very hard to get that huge growth when you are so large.'”

Macke reports, “Apple is a money-printing machine. If they never sold another iPhone or iPad, the iTunes store would still crank out billions in profits. But the market looks forward and it’s going to be all but impossible for Apple to retain its share of the smartphone or tablet industries. That’s the problem with inventing wildly profitable products — everyone starts gunning for you… Apple became the “Best Company on Earth” by taking the title from Microsoft. If Apple can’t keep defending that title with hotter and better offerings, it’s going to become what Microsoft is today: a money-printing machine with an absolutely dead stock.”

You seem to be mistaking Apple’s recent supply chain incompetence for lack of competition. I assure you, Apple has much need of better manufacturing controls, but there is no shortage of competition. Samdroid really is taking away a huge chunk of Apple’s potential sales, and Apple management has done a poor job explaining what they intend to do about it. You don’t attract investor confidence by saying, “just wait for our secret new thing, it’s in the pipeline” forever.

the list of products that need overhaul continues to grow, and the quality of recent releases (Maps, iTunes, etc) has not helped sales at all.

Apple’s market (the high end) is killing Samsung. There is no competition whatsoever. The ones who are opting for cheap phones will do irregardles. People dont love Samsung, they either want cheap, hate Apple or are stupid/dont care and go for samsung. That is not competition. Maps was “ok” and itunes is fine.

thank goodness Apple isn’t as out of touch as you. Samsung has Apple in its sights, and it has benchmarked Apple for its handset design. Though hampered by an inferior OS and app market, Samsung is still selling a lot of phones, including way too many Galaxies to former Apple customers.

Do not be pride-filled and willfully ignorant, and do not underestimate your competitor. These are the first mistakes that failing empires make.

“Samsing is still selling … Galaxies to former Apple customers.” Wait. What!!?

Where did you get that from? Only a small percentage of Apple customers leave the Apple ecosystem. Samsung is certainly selling to people who have never owned an Apple product. But they’re not getting very many switchers away from Apple.

Hey Mikey
You just like to make this shit up as you go along, don’t you?

Apple just reported the most profitable year of any company EVER, the fourth-most profitable quarter of any company EVER… all signs that the stock market makes absolutely no sense, and analysts either do not “get” Apple at all, or that it is the most manipulated stock EVER, because it always rebounds!

Analysts don’t “manipulate”. They calculate based on limited publicly-available information. Some of that information is intentionally misleading, some of it is useless noise that needlessly sets off alarm bells. No human being can accurately put a price on risk, but that’s exactly what the stock market is: a calculated guess of what the future value of a company will be after all the risks and opportunities play out.

In the case of Apple, clearly the market wants more guidance from Apple leadership. The stock price will return to more robust earnings when risks are addressed: competition, aging products, quality of software releases, supply chain constraints, and more. Cook and Co are doing a crappy job owning up to these recent setbacks — and hence the market is applying full discounting assuming all these risks will continue to get worse.

BS….. The Analcysts have NEVER listened to Apple’s guidance. Neither the Analcysts or ‘the street’ know how Apple work. Yet they overblow their ‘expert predictions’ in spite of what Apple says in their quarterly guidance, and Apple is punished in the market on even the most wildly successful quarters in the history of history.

Apple calculated their earnings based on real numbers and beat them. Analysts “calculated” their predictions based on limited numbers. They were off. Apple performed better than any company on earth. This fact is ignored by analysts. You are gullible if you think analysts don’t manipulate the stock. You really believe apple is failing? What other company can’t keep up with demand and makes $54.5 billion in a quarter?

moreover, several high-profile analysts were closer in their earnings prediction than Apple was. Apple has a history of low-balling its estimates, sometimes very badly. Obviously not all analysts were accurate, because a lot of them are short-sighted idiots with poor economic models, and let’s face it, life is a crap shoot anyway. It sounds to me as though your religious belief in Apple is trumping sound objective measures.

In the end, no one here would be arguing about stock price if their emotions weren’t hurt that somebody else doesn’t value Apple as highly as you do. That’s all the stock market is: a popularity contest. And yes, it is absolutely Apple management’s fault if they can’t maintain investor interest. Cook should return his over-inflated salary if he can’t/won’t.

You probably meant to add on to that, “throughout the quarter.” Apple already gives them their guidance once a quarter. Personally, I don’t think they listen, and so if I were “Apple leadership” I wouldn’t waste my time giving additional guidance.

You are absolutely right. And right now there are a shitload of people that are able to garner what may well be the best sale of the decade with AAPL on sale at 50% off. Because, a calm, reasonable, knowledgeable, and capable investor can look at the stock price, the financial statements, the business model, from inventory handling, to supply chain, to receivables turnover to bottom line profit and P/E, and justify $900 a share (or the $1,000/share that I showed was easily justified in my analysis here yesterday). iCal me, MDN, for a year from now. The economy is starting to cook along, and there’s isn’t any sign that Apple’s growth is going to abate. On the contrary, over the last 4 years, in an economy that has limped along under a contentious government, ending an unjustified, and very expensive war, winding down another, Apple’s new products have produced a wave of new Mac owners. And Mac owners tend to be a lot more brand-loyal. Indeed, they are coming from the iPhone and the iPad to get to the Mac. Loyalty has always been a boon to AAPL. It’s only going to grow from here. As long as Apple remains the innovative, user-experience-centric company that it always has been.

So, everyone, go out and give yourself a treat. By $50,000 of Apple stock at 50% off, before the market comes to its senses.

Yes, even if Steve Jobs never came CLOSE to achieving that. Current expectations are now light years beyond what people expected of Jobs. Poor Tim Cook, be careful what you wish for. Having said that I think Apple will pull some more magic out of the hat(e) this year and confound these “hacksperts”.

Another “armchair expert” blathering nonsense. Apple has always defied expectations and will continue to do so. There is no sign that Apple will fail to maintain market share in smartphones or tablets – indeed, especially in the US, the reverse is true. This nonsense is just a byproduct of an American culture which encourages big mouths and empty heads.

Apple has re-invented digital music (iPod and iTunes), re-invented mobile phones (iPhone), and re-invented mobile computing (iPad and MacBook Air). NONE of these were easy to do (obviously) and were revolutionary.

It just amazes me that people think Apple just reaches into a drawer and pulls out revolutionary product after revolutionary product. Sure, that would be wonderful, but it takes time to identify what needs to be revolutionized, then developing a product to do so, and finally getting it to market at a reasonable price.

And no, Apple is NOT the new Microsoft. Apple still improves its products.

And again, who give a shit about the stock? It’s just another thing to fold, spindle and mutilate in the rigged shell game that is the stock market. Are we really supposed to pretend that Apple’s stock settling down is bad for anyone else other than the hedge funds and shorts? All nonsense in the service of a narrative of greed and manipulation spun as positives for everyone, when its merely a con in favour of a few.

they elect the board who hire the CEO.
angry shareholders can pressure the board to get new CEO, new SVPs etc.

do YOU want Cook etc replaced? Maybe Ive might quit if there’s a new stupid CEO…

HP had no end of problems because the (shareholder appointed) board kept changing CEOs and interferring with running the company. the current HP CEO was a former member of the board who got the board to fire the last CEO.

One more time for people who keep saying apple should not bother with share price or shareholders:
((Jobs etc decided to go public years ago and sell shares to raise funds, not people just have to live with the fact that shareholders own apple. Apple is a PUBLIC not a PRIVATE company now).

SHAREHOLDERS ARE THE OWNERS (every apple asset, every office, factory, patent, retail store, all 130 billion is Cash etc) is owned by the shareholders and they ultimately control the company,